And after getting as far as this strange terrestrial chip-pile, he has been so unfortunately susceptible as to fall in love with some slender-limbed daughter of the desert?—­has he been captivated by a pair of big, opthamalmia-proof, black eyes, a coy sidewise glance, or a graceful, jaunty style of shouldering a half-tanned goat-skin of doke?

The very first question the nomad asks of the khan, however, removes all suspicions of his being the author and publisher of X. M. M.—­he asks if I am a Ferenghi and whither I am going; Kron would have asked me for tabulated statistics of my tour through Persia.

A couple of hours’ rest in the Eliaute camp, and we bid adieu to this queer little oasis of human life within the barbarous boundary-line of the Dasht-i-na-oomid, and proceed on our way.  One of the Eliautes accompanies us some little distance to guide us through a belt of badly broken country immediately surrounding their camp.  The country continues to be a regular jumble of odds and ends of physical geography all the afternoon, and several times the horses of the sowars, without preliminary warning, break through the thin upper crust of some treacherous boggy spot and sink suddenly to their bellies.  During the afternoon the mirza is pitched headlong over his horse’s head once, and the khan and the mudbake twice.  In one tumble the khan’s loosely sheathed sword slips from its scabbard, and he well nigh falls a victim to the accident a la King Saul.  While traversing this treacherous belt of territory I make the sowars lead the way and perform the office of pathfinder for myself and wheel.  Whenever one of them gets stuck in boggy ground, and his horse flounders wildly about, to the imminent risk of unseating its rider, his two hopeful comrades bubble over with merriment at his expense; his own sincere exclamations of “Allah!” being answered by unsympathetic jeers and sarcastic remarks.  A few minutes later, perchance one of the hilarious twain finds himself unexpectedly in the same predicament; it then becomes his turn to look scared and importune Allah for protection, and also his turn to be the target for the wild hilarity of the others.

And so this lively and eventful afternoon passes away, and about five o’clock we round the base of a conglomerate hill that has been shutting out the prospect ahead, cross a small spring freshet, and emerge upon an extensive gravelly plain stretching away eastward to the horizon.  It is the central plain of the Dasht-i-na-oomid, the heart of the desert, of which the wild, heterogeneous territory traversed since morning forms the setting.  So far as the utility of the bicycle and the horses is concerned, the change is decidedly for the better, even more so for the former than for the latter.  The gravelly plain presents very good wheeling surface, and I forge ahead of my escort, following a trail so faint that it is barely distinguishable from the general surface.  Shortly after leaving the mountainous country the three sowars